What Are The Main Reasons Why Franchise Prospects Visit Franchisor Websites After Submitting Inquiries on Franchise Portals?
By: Michael Alston for Franchise Insights
June 12, 2024 — Most prospects who request information on franchise portal sites end up visiting the franchisor’s website afterward. Why does this happen? To answer this question, we surveyed prospects who submitted an inquiry on a franchise portal and then visited the franchisor’s website.
In our most recent survey, about 72% of portal lead submitters made a subsequent visit to the corresponding franchise development website. Almost half of the respondents indicated that the primary reason for their visit was that they were “very interested and just wanted to learn more.” Additionally, 34.2% of portal inquirers said they wanted to better prepare themselves before speaking to a franchise representative.
More than one-third of portal inquirers said they wanted to better prepare themselves before having a conversation with a franchise representative.
This referral value is a substantial benefit in addition to the cost of leads. Prospects who take the time to research a franchise and visit its website demonstrate a level of interest and intent that can lead to more productive conversations with franchise representatives.
What explains this referral phenomenon?
Recent awareness data shows that less than 10% of prospects are “very familiar” with the opportunities they inquire about on franchise portals, and about 19% are “somewhat familiar.” Over 41% of prospects are introduced to an unfamiliar franchise on a portal visit. This is why third-party sites like franchise portals are important to franchise development, especially as consumers spend more of their time on fragmented social media and streaming platforms.
In our March to May 2024 surveys, we asked prospects why they visited the franchisor site(s) after submitting a portal inquiry. The overwhelming response, at 47.7%, was “I was very interested and just wanted to learn more.” Another 34.2% wanted to “prepare before having a conversation” with franchise representatives. For 10.8% of respondents, the portals, which function as directory sites, didn’t provide “sufficient information.”
These highly interested “referred” prospects get attributed to the franchisor’s website, even though they originated on the portal. This is a positive outcome, but it may lead to improper attribution of interested prospects to the “last touch” rather than the portal that was the source of the lead.
Summary: Franchise portals drive interested prospects to your franchise development website, in addition to franchise leads they provide directly.
The “Mystery Shop” survey is conducted monthly by FranchiseInsights.com from a sample of franchise inquirers across the FranchiseVentures franchise lead generation platform. The data presented here is from March through May 2024.
Franchise Ventures is the leading franchise lead-generation platform for potential franchisees to thousands of growing franchise systems in the United States and Canada. Its franchise lead generation brands include Franchise.com, Franchise Solutions, Franchise Gator, Franchise Opportunities, Franchise For Sale, SmallBusinessStartup.com and BusinessBroker.net, and together they provide the largest aggregation of prospective franchise buyers in the U.S.
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Published on Wednesday, June 12th, 2024.